


The Morning After Job

by FletcherHonorama



Series: Leverage International [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Canon Compliant, Multi, POV Eliot Spencer, Post-Canon, but this is pre-ot3 for it all the same, my idea of endgame ot3 maybe isn't classic ot3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-02-04 15:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18607438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FletcherHonorama/pseuds/FletcherHonorama
Summary: In theory, taking some time off before entering a new phase in your professional life is a sensible move. In practice, your colleagues will text you 20 times within the first 12 hours of your hiatus.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So the Leverage finale really just went "hey me and Sophie are leaving if she will marry me" "i will marry you and immediately leave the group also" "okay sweet we'll just do the whole Leverage International thing then" "well bye forever" and then they were Leverage International.
> 
> I live to fill in gaps. This fic fills in only the teeny-tiniest gap, but we all have to start somewhere.

Eliot woke up slowly. There had been a dream, he could tell, but by the time he was awake enough to try to remember it, the whole thing had slipped all the way out of his mind. 

Rain was falling softly outside, like it had all day yesterday and the day before and more than likely would all through today and tomorrow. Eliot didn't mind rain, but it always made getting out of bed that little bit harder. For a second he was disgusted at himself for even thinking that, and even more for the fact that it was true, but he was on the other side of forty now and if the occasional old-man thought came to him, well, he'd just have to learn to move with the times. Denial wasn’t a good look on anybody, and Eliot was dammed if he was going to let it get a grip on him.

On the old-man note, his knee was aching again this morning but the rest it had been getting in the last little while had done it good. Each morning he woke up he had a little bit more range of movement, a duller and less persistent ache. By Eliot's reckoning, once he was up and moving he wouldn't even notice it today. 

The question was whether it was time for that just yet. Eliot forced one eye open and fixed it on his clock: 0540. Too late to feel good about going back to sleep, too early to feel properly rested after the kind of day that yesterday had been.

The last week had all been tidying up loose ends, celebration, a farewell to the old world. Yesterday Eliot had said his final, official goodbyes to the man who was handing the Leverage business over to Hardison and Parker and to the woman who was handing oversight of the crew over to him. Sophie and Nate had gone off on their honeymoon, under strict instructions not to come back to the USA - hell, any part of any kind of America, either hemisphere - for at least a year. A clean break and clear air on both sides. That had been the decision, argued back and forward for the month or so between the proposal and the marriage and then finalized and ratified yesterday before the flight out. 

They'd all - "all" now meaning just Eliot, Hardison and Parker - agreed they wouldn't take any jobs for at least two weeks from today. The calm before the storm, Hardison called it, and he was right. Things were going to get very interesting very soon. But for now, Eliot's time was his own and he could do whatever he wanted with it. He could go back to sleep, if he liked. It was early, it was cold, it was raining. The boss had retired, married and flown out of the country, and with him any semblance of centralized authority their team had ever had. 

He could just sleep. 

His phone buzzed, muffled against the carpet, and Eliot looked at the time again. 0543 hours. It didn't really make any difference, he supposed, when it came to Parker or Hardison. Either one of them were just as likely to text him at quarter to six in the morning than during what were generally considered, by civilized people, to be office hours, or even just culturally-accepted human contact hours. 

As Eliot saw it, he had three options: check the message, ignore it and go back to sleep, or ignore it and get up and go about his day. He’d just about decided to roll over and see if he could drop off again, but when his phone buzzed again his traitorous hand reached down to the floor and brought the screen into his line of vision. Nineteen messages, goddamn. 

Back in the day, before Leverage Inc, nineteen messages would be an adrenaline spike. Nineteen messages meant he'd slept through something big. These days, it probably meant Hardison had been up all night working and decided to use Eliot's phone as a version of him that Hardison could talk to but that wouldn't answer back, or that Parker had made some kind of discovery that she wouldn't be able to process until she'd shared it with Eliot specifically. Again, whether or not Eliot could or would respond in any way was pretty much irrelevant. Sometimes Parker just needed to share.

 _Eliot can I come and visit,_ was the first one, from Parker. Eliot vaguely remembered hearing his phone as he'd been dropping off to sleep just before midnight, and he'd rolled over away from it and gone to sleep. Texts weren't for urgent communications and he had licence to ignore them for as long as he damn well liked. Eliot had made that crystal clear, specifically, on more occasions than he had fingers and toes.

Then Parker again, quarter past midnight: _Or can you come back_

Two minutes later: _Are you asleep_

And then two minutes after that: _Hardison said something rude about you come and yell at him_

Then Hardison: _It's lies, man. Nothing but respect._

Eliot sighed, dropped the phone back to the floor and raised himself out of bed. This wasn't the first time they'd decided to invite an unconscious and geographically distant Eliot into their everyday domestic ... _discourse_ or whatever the hell it was they did, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last. 

Another buzz. What was that now, fifteen unread and counting? Eliot wanted to meditate. He had to stretch out, limber up. He wanted to go for a run, get some sparring in, set up good habits before diving into the era of Leverage International. If they were going to war, he had to be ready.

He did his stretches and his strengthening exercises, gave his punching bag a few knees and elbows to get his blood pumping. Once he felt centred in his body and mind, Eliot went back and scooped his phone up from the ground by his bed. He needed something to read over breakfast anyway. 

_I was talking to hardison and he said nate left me in charge. Nate never said I was in charge right_

_He never said to me I was in charge_

_Eliot am I in charge_

_Can I visit_

Then there was three hours of radio silence. The next text, at 0331, wasn't from Hardison or Parker but from an old friend: _E XFS in LSA. AoN?_

Eliot sent back a quick "N", and then the next message was from Hardison just before 4 am.

_Come over for breakfast, okay. Executive meeting._

_Can you bring breakfast too._

_Safely landed, btw. Checked into hotel. No egregious criminal activity. They look good. Raining there too but S doesn’t mind since it’s Euro rain which is COMPLETELY different you know to our inferior American strain._

Then there was a gap to 0511. Hardison again.

_Eliot my guy,._

Eliot stared at that one for a moment or two, chewing thoughtfully, then cursed having wasted any time at all trying to find a meaning in what was clearly just dead-of-night Hardison brain. He'd probably sent the thing in his damn sleep.

All the rest were photos from Parker, from quarter past five and onward. Eliot pushed his empty bowl to one side and looked at them carefully, one after the other. There were only two reasons Parker ever sent him photos over the phone off-job: either because she was trying to do art or because she was in the kind of state where she wanted to communicate but had lost her handle on words. Either way, it was something to take seriously.

The first one was of some graffiti on a concrete wall, with just a small area lit by the flash. It was a little blue monster with three eyes and long grabby fingers, wearing a bowler hat with a red flower in it. The second picture, just two minutes later, was the same monster on a different bit of wall, except this monster was red and had a blue flower. There was nothing that remarkable about it to Eliot’s eye – just a little three-eyed dude with bold lines and uneven shading – but it was just the kind of thing Parker sometimes took a fancy to.

The rest, a little while after, were all shots of the city from up real high, from a slightly different location each time. When Parker was making an effort at photography, she usually played around with perspective or reflection, or she looked for some kind of bold, dramatic contrast. These were all just landscape photos of city lights, kind of blurry and thoughtless, each one a little bit brighter than the last but none of them pointed eastwards to catch the sunrise. Definitely not an art show.

Once Eliot had dealt with his dishes, it was a matter of three minutes to get himself organized and head out the door. He took a picture of his boots on the sidewalk, sent it to Parker then tucked his phone into his jacket pocket and set off into the rain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for all your comments! Hope you enjoy :)

The "little" place Hardison had bought for Parker and him to stay at had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a double garage, a giant study, a 60-inch TV, two skylights, a kitchen the size of the house Eliot grew up in, a home gym, a walk-in pantry and a lounge suite that would have cost more than most people's cars. It was the kind of house that traditionally had either a housewife or a housekeeper, and Hardison had neither. What he had was robots, handmade, each one with a name, a personality profile and personal charging pod. At the moment there were four in active duty, but there was no way known it was going to end at four. Knowing Hardison, it would never end at all.

The thing was, Eliot had money too. If he never got paid another dollar his entire life, he’d still be comfortable till the day he died. But he’d never leant into the lifestyle the way Hardison did. He still wasn’t totally easy walking over the polished-clean floor in his wet boots, dumping his shopping bags on the dappled quartz countertop, slinging his jacket over a thousand-dollar chair to dry, however many times he’d done it before. On a job, for a grift, playing at the high life was easy. Hell, it was fun. But when there was no con, no job and no damn excuse for it, it didn’t sit right with him.

Hardison clearly did not have the same problem. For all the things that were inexplicable about Alec Hardison, this was one that still every now and then crept up behind Eliot and knocked him over the head. Hardison had grown up just as poor as Eliot, probably poorer at times, but now he lived in wealth like a fish lived in water. He didn’t just have the money and he didn’t just have the trappings. He had the whole damn attitude. He had style, had taste, had class. Man had the god damn _je ne sais quoi_ and plenty of it. And sometimes things casually came out of his mouth that showed his brain had started to melt under the weight of all that money, and he needed to be told about it. Eliot was always happy to oblige.

You'd never know just how nouveau Hardison's riche really was unless you knew where he'd come from – or unless you took a second look at his kitchen. Eliot knew a thing or two about kitchens, and this one was sleek, spacious, modern and comprehensively fitted-out. It was a kitchen that belonged in a catalogue. It was a kitchen that looked like it was still _in_ a catalogue. Eliot was confident that the only appliances anyone other than him had ever used were the microwave and the coffee machine. It was all too clean, too sterile, an obvious overspend that didn’t match the lifestyle. Aspirational was the word. The rest of the house was assured; the kitchen was aspirational.

And if you needed any more evidence of it, all you had to do was start opening doors: a pantry full cereal for Parker, a fridge full of orange soda for Hardison and a freezer crammed full of microwave meal garbage for the both of them, with exactly one empty shelf in each. The way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and you could usually find most of his past in there as well.

Now, Eliot wasn't an idiot and he knew bait when he saw it. One perfectly empty shelf of each kind wasn’t exactly subtle. But it still wasn't clear to him exactly what kind of bait it was, and with these two he didn’t like guessing. It could be anything from, “Gee, Eliot the Food Guy, I wish you’d do some shopping for us once in a while,” to, “Come and live with us in a committed exclusive triad and never ever leave,” and even if Eliot managed to work out whereabouts on that scale things really stood, there were no guarantees that Hardison and/or Parker had even worked it out yet for themselves. Eliot had walked around in plenty of minefields in his time – this one he’d be steering well clear.

So Eliot left the trap unsprung. He’d bring food and cook it for them, sure, because otherwise they’d both get scurvy and die within weeks, but the three shelves stayed empty and he always left the kitchen in exactly the same state he found it. If the two of them had something to say, they could damn well come out and say it, and until then Eliot would carry on just exactly as he had been. It was going to take a while for the team to find a new balance after losing its two most senior members, so it was a good time to keep things very, very simple.

Eliot walked through the palatial open-plan living area, crossing paths on the way with DRD, or DRE, or whatever Hardison had called the little round yellow robot that patrolled the floors and cleaned up messes. The urge Eliot always had to kick the damn thing hadn’t faded at all over time, but like always he let it zoom on past him towards the front door to clean up where he’d tracked water and a bit of mud into the house.

He went a little way down the hall and stuck his head around the corner of the second door on the left, the study, where Hardison kept all his junk and did most of his work, and there he was slouched back in his computer chair, wearing a pair of big black headphones and yesterday's clothes. The window in this room was closed and shuttered; the only light sources in the room were from the four monitors lined up along the desk and three wall lamps on the other walls, which were emitting a low orange light. 

Not only was the room dark, it was breathlessly still. The only parts of Hardison that were moving were his eyes flickering from one monitor to the other to the other to the other and his fingers flying over the wireless keyboard in his lap. From time to time, he nodded his head a bit along with whatever music he was listening to, but it didn’t take long until his focus took over again.

He definitely hadn't noticed Eliot, who hadn’t been moving quietly at all, and that was infuriating. Eliot knew Hardison had installed all his own security around the house, including security features on at least one of the robots, and he knew that when Hardison was in the zone he sometimes lost touch with the world around him, but the complete lack of personal awareness still made Eliot's hackles rise as he stood there.

Dude obviously had been at this all night. Not that Hardison staying up all night was anything new, but most times there was some kind of reason to it: they were on a job, or he had a special project, or he was playing one of his games, or Parker had dragged him out for some kind of romantic nocturnal parkour. What Hardison got up to in his personal life was his own business, obviously, and Eliot had nothing to say about it, but when they were specifically taking these couple of weeks off to rest and recharge, it was … frustrating to see Hardison doing the exact opposite.

After Eliot had been standing there for a while trying to decide how mad to be, Hardison started to spin slowly around to face the door, still absently typing. When he shifted his weight onto his feet, about to stand up, he finally saw Eliot standing there and blinked three times very hard. "Oh hey," he said, his hands going still on the keyboard. "Hi. Is it –"

"I'm here for the executive meeting," Eliot told him.

Hardison pushed his headphones down to rest around his neck and put his keyboard onto the desk. "Say what?"

Eliot gestured at just the whole situation. The computer screens, the shadowy room, the general state of him. "What are you doing, man?"

Hardison's fingers started drumming on the arm of his chair. His other hand reached out for the keyboard, tapped a few keys and the room got about twenty percent brighter. Now Eliot could properly see the robotics table with its latest project, the futon piled high with little cardboard boxes and a mess of cables, the row of empty soda bottles on the floor underneath the desk. He could see Hardison better too, and there was definitely a little bit of panic simmering away in there, with plenty of denial to cover it up. Not that that was anything new. 

“You know, Parker's actually kinda really stressed out right now," Hardison said. 

It wasn’t clear to Eliot whether Hardison was ignoring the question or if that was his answer to it. "Yeah, I know,” he said. “She's been sending me stuff."

"Oh," said Hardison. "She has?" 

"Yeah."

Hardison exhaled slowly and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. The drumming slowed, then stopped. He nodded. "Good. That's good, man. That's good."

Eliot looked over the four screens real quick. It was just – computer stuff. Just endless text, maps, tables, charts. "So what are you –"

"You know, like, sometimes she just doesn't wanna talk," Hardison said. He leaned forward in his chair, and now he was starting to talk with his hands. "And so then obviously we don't talk, if she doesn't want to, like, that’s – you gotta do what you gotta do, but then how am I – you know, Eliot, I just want to look out for her, man. I gotta look out for her, and she’s – you know. She’s Parker.”

For someone who talked himself up as a feelings guy, you’d think Hardison would have worked a few things out by now. He was a smart guy, but sometimes he could be a real slow learner. “You've been up all night staring at this crap because Parker wanted some time to herself, huh.”

Eliot watched as in a split second Hardison considered that, recognized it was true and decided to deflect. "What? No. No, it ain't like that.” He made an expansive gesture at the row of monitors on his computer desk. “This is the _book_. I'm working on the - everything we got. You know, I'd like to see _you_ try and develop any kind of plan from the sheer raw data off this thing. It ain't gonna translate itself into regular human speak for the likes of you. Translation, interpretation, analysis, then –"

Eliot let "the likes of you" pass for the moment. He had bigger fish to fry. "And you've gotta do that kind of grunt work all night straight after Nate and Sophie's farewell, when we all agreed we were off work. Great planning, bro.” He capped that off with an ironic thumbs-up, which he knew really got on Hardison’s nerves.

The look Hardison gave him was exactly the look Eliot's middle school librarian used to give him when she wanted to kick him out but couldn't think of a rule to get him on. The same narrow-eyed, resentful stare. All he was missing was the spectacles on a chain around his neck. And about thirty years, and a perm to die for.

And you know what, now Eliot thought about it, he wasn’t finished. "And while Parker's out, you're in here alone and you don't even notice I come in the front door? I’ve been standing here for over seven minutes and you don’t look up for one second and notice I’m here? What the hell, man."

"Come on, Eliot,” Hardison said. “You’re really gonna say you're a security issue here?”

“You should know if someone else is in the house with you,” Eliot said. “That really ain’t much to ask.”

"I live with _Parker_ in this house," said Hardison. He thought for a second. “Mostly.”

"And?"

"And she's _Parker_. You think I'm designing a security system that's gonna keep track of Parker? You're out of your mind. You and her got full access, and if anyone who ain't you or her comes in uninvited, you can bet shit goes _down_. I can run you through my flowchart and all the design documents, if you like, work up a lil slideshow, lots of pictures –"

"Damn it, Hardison, I’m just saying –”

"I know what you’re saying, Eliot,” Hardison said, getting agitated. “You’re saying I ain’t taken care of security right.”

“I ain’t saying –” 

“You’re saying I ain’t done my job. My _job_. Like I said, man, I can show you the files. You wanna run drills? I got drills we can run.”

“You can type up as many files as you want, man. That ain’t the point.”

“They don’t watch for you or Parker because –"

“I am _five feet_ away from you right now –”

“You’re lurking, man, that ain’t my fault.”

“– and you ain’t seen me for –”

“Eliot, I swear –”

“– seven minutes.”

“I got privacy protocols so –”

“Seven minutes is an embarrassment. I wasn’t even –”

“If you wanna be monitored every second you in this house, man –”

“– trying to sneak up on you. You’re sitting here in the dark –”

“– I can add you back into the warning system and start tracking your ass –”

“– headphones on your damn head, you might as well be wearing blinkers for all the awareness you got when you’re –”

Eliot realized Hardison had stopped talking, and his own words faded away. Hardison was looking at him, one side of his mouth twisted up in a half-repressed grin.

Eliot didn’t appreciate how much that threw him, but it did. “What?”

“Seven minutes?” Hardison said, the smile starting to spread.

“Yeah, man. Seven minutes.” If Hardison made a crack about Eliot counting all the way to seven, he could drink his precious orange soda through a straw.

Hardison swung back around to face his computer screens, grinning like a fool. “That’s cool, man,” he said, settling his hands back on the keyboard and nodding, overplaying enigmatic like he overplayed everything else in his damn life. “Seven minutes. Cool.”

“Cool? How is it –”

“Naw, man, it’s cool. You right. You right. It’s a _loooong_ time to stand and watch a –”

“What the hell are you trying to –”

"Hi," said Parker, about five yards behind Eliot.

"Hey," he said, half-turning to check how she looked. Hardison, he noticed, shut the hell up, and Eliot counted it a blessing.

Parker stood there in the hall and looked back at Eliot. Her expression was open, but she wasn’t making eye contact. She was still but not frozen, calm but not zoned out. More than anything, she had that look she got when she was on a mission: sober and determined and with her emotions swung down to minimum. That was fine; it was what Eliot had expected. Parker was hardly the first person he’d known to shut down parts of themselves when the going got tough and they had to keep going. Hardison might struggle with some of the ways Parker handled herself, but layers of survival mode weren’t exactly news to Eliot. Parker wouldn't have come back unless she was ready, and here she was, ready.

Ready for what, was the question. Eliot could only hope that Parker had more words than “hi” in her at the moment and they’d be able to sit down and shake things out. Between Parker’s texts throughout the night and Hardison’s maladaptive coping bullshit, Eliot was absorbing enough nervous tension to last him months.

"Breakfast in 15 minutes," he said to them both. "I just gotta throw some things together."

"But you've already had breakfast," Parker said, suddenly a little bit more focused and staring at him right in the face. 

"I never told –"

"Yes," Hardison said loudly, theatrically, getting to his feet with a gleam in his eye. He lifted his chin. "But what about second breakfast?"

The goddamn – "You'll be lucky if I don't throw it at _you_ ," Eliot said. He hadn't come all this way at six thirty in the morning, bringing breakfast no less, just to be argued with and talked over and _quoted_ at. 

Hardison grinned. Eliot turned and walked back past Parker towards the kitchen, but not fast enough to miss her slightly flat but clear, "I don't think he knows about second breakfast," or Hardison's affectionate "eyyyyyyy" that followed it.

It was – it was _obscene_ that the tension of a long and anxious night for the both of them could be broken with just a call-and-response quote from a movie. Bad enough that Eliot had recognized the movie it had come from. Even worse that the thought had occurred to him – _only_ _very, very briefly –_ to throw some kind of food from the kitchen back at them. That all was upsetting enough to be going on with, but the real kick in the teeth was that Eliot hadn’t repeatedly babysat Hardison through rapid-onset relationship panic and spent long, long afternoons deconstructing the concept of romance with Parker just for the two of them to throw all his good work out the window and use _nerd power_ to bridge their differences. 

He was halfway through chopping the mushrooms when he realized he was smiling.

Damn it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'd fully intended to get this whole story out in like two weeks total, but then I had three flat-out weekends and this last chapter kept getting pushed back, so sorry about the wait! Thanks everyone for reading and all your comments, hope you enjoy it :)

  


Parker came out into the kitchen just as Eliot switched off the burners. "Smells like eggs," she announced. "Is it eggs?"

It only took half a glance to see that the last twenty minutes had done Parker good. Another layer of unease had been stripped away, she had more casual movement about her, there was a little more expression in her face. The Hardison effect, Eliot knew. For a guy who was always freaking out about how he was handling his first ever serious relationship and needed other people to settle him down when he was spiraling, Hardison sure knew how to treat his girl with care. 

Hardison was always gentle with Parker, which mostly saved Eliot from having to. It wasn't exactly what he'd call a strength. "Set the table," he said. "We're gonna sit down and eat properly."

Parker nodded solemnly and headed over to the drawers. "Campfire, casual, family, semiformal, formal, hyperformal or space station?" she asked, pulling the top drawer open and taking a long look at its contents.

Eliot wouldn't rise to it. Maybe Parker was still feeling weird, but that didn't mean she had to be _indulged._ Eliot would be perfectly happy going his whole life never seeing a space-station place setting. "Basic breakfast," he said, worming his hand into an oven mitt.

"Blaaarghhp," Parker said, just that little bit louder than was necessary. "Option not available. You have two lives remaining."

Eliot was going to _kill_ Hardison for - well, for a lot of things. Parker had been weird enough already without starting to walk around talking like a video game. And from the sounds of things Hardison had decided to take a shower, so he wasn't going to come in and distract her any time soon.

Eliot grit his teeth. "Casual," he said, and hoped for the best.

"Aye aye," Parker said. Eliot turned to take the bread out of the oven, and when he turned back to put the tray on the counter Parker had a fistful of cutlery, including three chopsticks, a fish knife and a soup spoon.

"Parker," he said, and then couldn't think where to take it.

"Eliot," Parker echoed him. He just shook his head and picked up the breadknife. 

Parker was back hovering at his elbow within a minute, shadowing him as he folded each omelette and transferred them onto plates, buttered the bread and split the salad into three servings. She'd used to get in his way all the time when she did this, like a cat underfoot; now he barely noticed she was there. 

The water shut off in the bathroom when Eliot was on his way over to the table with the three plates. It was a long table designed to seat six, but there were only ever four chairs around it. Three places were set: on one of the long sides there was a perfectly conventional restaurant-grade breakfast setting, the other long side had two forks and the fish knife, and at the head of the table Parker had laid out the three chopsticks on the right-hand side and a soup spoon on the left. 

She ducked around him with the coffee pot in one hand and a jug of water in the other, setting them down in the middle of the table with extreme precision and a kind of delighted domestic pride. 

"Something missing?" Eliot asked her after he'd put a plate on each placemat.

Parker looked at the table then around the room. "Hardison?" she guessed.

“Parker, I ain't drinking coffee right out the pot."

"Why not? It's more efficient."

It took a twenty-five second staredown, but Parker spun around and went back into the kitchen, coming back with three coffee cups in one hand and three tall glasses in the other. "Voilà."

Eliot sat at the normal place setting, and Parker took the double-forked seat. "I like these meetings," she said.

Hardison came out a minute later in sweatpants and a hoodie. "Smells goood," he said, half-jogging over to the table and sliding into his seat. He didn't seem surprised to see the cutlery he'd been given, he just looked at them, nodded appraisingly and looked up. "Aight," he said. "Challenge accepted."

Parker took her first bite with her eyes closed, chewing slowly like she was trying to transcend her earthly form. Hardison picked up two chopsticks in his right hand and the spoon in his left, then reconsidered and put the spoon back down. Eliot poured himself some coffee.

"Gruyère cheese," Parker announced. 

Eliot would be impressed by that if she hadn't been snooping around in the kitchen reading all the labels. "Is that right," he said, picking up his knife and fork.

Hardison transferred one chopstick into his other hand and planted them both into his omelette, slowly tearing it in two. Eliot took a moment to appreciate the way it came apart and congratulate himself for nailing the texture.

"It tastes fresh," Parker said. "Like mousse but at the beach."

Eliot took a bite of his own omelette. Like mousse, but at the beach. There was absolutely no one else in the world like Parker.

"So I been thinking," Hardison announced when he'd managed to eat the first half of his omelette and Eliot and Parker were most of the way through theirs. He put down his chopsticks and poured himself some coffee. "The classic three-person crew is warrior, mage, rogue, right? We got that covered. That's fine. If you got four, standard move is go for a healer. You know, your cleric, typically. Druid. Whatever. If you stretch to five, then you can splash out on a bard, you know, because all the _functional_ roles are covered. The charisma class is an extravagance, right?"

Eliot was going to make a real biting comment about Hardison ruining breakfast talking about videogame theory, but his mouth was full and by the time he'd swallowed Hardison was off again.

"But then the thing is we got picked out _by_ our jack-of-all-trades dude. The fifth guy, the bonus guy, he started it. He's the middle. He ain't a top-up we can just, like, _shuck_ and go on like normal _._ We built outward from that guy, and ain't none of us gonna one-for-one _replace_ him because we got the core roles we can't drop either. They're core classes for a reason. You always gotta have 'em unless you're on, like, a boutique campaign with a real obliging DM. We ain't got that luxury. The world is our DM, and the world ain’t obliging.”

Partway through _that_ speech, Eliot had pivoted from being mad that Hardison was talking irrelevant videogame crap to being super mad that Hardison was talking about actual serious relevant business through the medium of videogame crap. Parker was listening to him like he was talking actual words, and Eliot had a sudden vision of what the future could look like if he let it.With Nate and Sophie gone and with Parker dating Hardison and learning his ways, Eliot was the only one left who could stand in the way of Leverage as World of Witches or Leverage as Star Wars or Leverage as Lord of the Rings or whatever other dumbass ideas Hardison was gonna bring to the table.

He had to step up before it was too late.

"Hardison, if you're talking about this crew like a god damn video game -"

Hardison shot him a wounded look. "Older than video games, Eliot. This is tabletop shit, man, old as you."

Tabletop. Tabletop gaming. ”Look, I'm only gonna say this once. We ain't playing _dungeons and dragons_ here."

"It's called an an-al-o-gy," Hardison said, drinking his coffee in an intentionally aggravating manner.

"Analogies are meant to be illustrative," Eliot said, "not embarrassing."

Hardison pulled the coffee cup away from his mouth, swallowed and let out an offended breath. "Excuse you?"

"You think you're a _wizard_?"

"Any sufficiently advanced technology –"

"I know the quote! That ain't the point!"

"I don't understand it," Parker said to Hardison. "We never had a healer or a bard at all. Eliot just hired nurses and Sophie can’t sing.”

"Okay," Hardison said, putting his cup down. "Okay. That's valid. _That –_ " he looked pointedly at Eliot "– is a fair point. And technically _Sophie_ was the pure charisma class, whatever, and if Nate wasn't a lying drunken manipulative thief – I mean, I've thought about this – if anything, he'd be, like, a _paladin_ , which is just – man, that just says it all."

He looked first at Parker and then Eliot, like he'd said something profound. Eliot was too busy having extremely valid second thoughts about the whole venture to engage with a single word he'd said. 

"I don't think we should put the book onto the dark web," Parker announced. 

Eliot just about got whiplash from the non sequitur. "Come on, Parker." He was supposed to be on _leave_ right now, not trying to follow the barely comprehensible thought processes of the two weirdest people Eliot had ever known.

"Yeah, what?" said Hardison, looking just about as baffled as Eliot felt, and suddenly Eliot felt a whole lot better. It was the little things in life.

"I was just thinking what Nate would do," Parker said. "You know, lying and manipulating and stealing." She waggled her head as she said it, like it was a recitation she'd gone through countless times but couldn't be avoided. "But he always made it personal. It was always our plan, and we did the work ourselves. _We_ were the good guys. We didn't outsource it.”

"But he's retired, babe. We can do this thing our way. This is the future, we don't always gotta be so hands-on about everything."

Parker frowned. "We don't have a way yet," she said. "Like you said. We don't have someone to be Nate any more, and we've never just been us. We don't have our own way."

It looked like Hardison wanted to say something, and he almost did, but then he held it back and thought it over instead. He picked up his chopsticks and started on the second half of his omelette. The fun had obviously gone out of the method, and his movements were more abrupt, but he stuck with it. Parker watched him closely.

Eliot felt the silence settle, and for the first time he really felt the lack of Sophie and Nate around the table, and it was nothing to do with missing the professional skills they'd brought to the crew. The tension from last night had been ratcheted down a lot from where it had been, but it was still there, and there was only three of them left to work their way out of it.

It was easy for workmates, even close ones, to lose their bond when the structure that had held them together changed or got dissolved. Not every relationship could survive a change in setting, and not every dynamic could grow stronger when it shifted. Eliot had been through it enough times over the years to be dead certain that the three of them, here and now, would be just fine. Maybe it would be a bit messy to start off with, but they'd settle, they'd find their groove, and they'd work. Eliot had been around the block a few times, and he knew what was what. What the three of them had was extraordinary, and it was everything to him. Long-term, he had zero concerns.

What he hadn't seen coming, and maybe should have, was that the other two didn't have the experience behind them to have that same confidence. Sometimes Eliot forgot that Leverage Inc was the first real team Parker or Hardison had ever been a part of. Nate had taken the cocky careless son of a bitch Hardison had been and the snapping wild animal that Parker had been, and he'd trained them, guided them, molded them, and now he was gone. They were smart and they'd had time to prepare for this, but brainpower was no substitute for experience. 

And Eliot had the experience, but the thing was, he wasn't a leader. He was a follower and had been all his life. Taking orders, taking directions, taking jobs, taking lives, taking consequences. Even after he'd started to go more his own way, he still wasn't really in charge. Even when he'd chosen all his own jobs, he was still taking jobs from other people. Nate had been the best of the bunch, but he was still part of a long line of men – _white men_ , Hardison pointed out in his head – who Eliot had looked to for direction. 

Nate had been management, Sophie had been management-adjacent, Parker and Hardison had been the raw recruits, and Eliot had been the guy in the middle, neither and both at the same time. But he wasn't in the middle any more. When it came to age, experience and good old-fashioned common sense, he was up top of the list. The days of just hovering and supporting, having it a bit each way according to what suited him, were over, because he was one guy in three now, not one guy in five, and if you left Parker and Hardison with their hands on the wheel you'd go on one hell of a wild ride without ever getting where you wanted to go. They were capable of extreme focus, dedication and productivity, but they were also both highly distractable and kinda fragile, and Eliot was who they had to keep them on the level.

 _Promise me you'll keep them safe_ , Sophie had said.

Eliot wasn't a leader, but he was a team player, and he knew what his team needed right now. Taking a break had seemed a good call at the time, and Eliot had really seriously been looking forward to his, but looking at the bigger picture, it had been the wrong move. Parker and Hardison didn't need time languishing in no man's land, getting spooked by their own doubts and imaginary scenarios that went nowhere. They needed to get on with things and see for themselves what Eliot already knew.

Parker had taken Hardison's last bit of bread and was eating it by tearing off tiny little pieces one at a time. She was watching Hardison, and Hardison was somewhere far away, computing or composing or sulking or something as he worked his chopsticks. 

Eliot's own plate was empty, and he was ready. "So are we talking business or fucking around?"

Parker's head whipped around to him like a released rubber band. Hardison very, very, very slowly tilted his head back, sizing Eliot up through slightly narrowed eyes. "You tell me, man," he said.

"Are we swearing at meetings now?" Parker asked, like a whole new world was opening up before her eyes.

"If y'all want a mourning period for the old days, do that," said Eliot. "Wallow if you gotta wallow. Take two weeks. When you're ready to get shit done, I'm ready to go."

"I'm ready," Parker said, so fast it was practically one syllable. "Let's go."

Hardison raised one finger in the air, picked up the spoon with his other hand and cleaned off his plate in five seconds flat. "One second," he said, getting out of his chair with his mouth full and one finger still raised. "One second. Hold every single thought you got." He hightailed it out of the main area and down the corridor.

Parker chewed and swallowed the last bit of bread. "I never mourned for the old days before," she said to Eliot. "They were always bad. I never missed them."

Eliot's throat started to close up real suddenly, so he poured himself some water and drank it down. "Yeah," he said, his voice coming out thicker than he'd like.

"It makes sense," she said, picking up her and Hardison's plate. "Mourning the old days. Because they're gone now forever. So ... you can mourn them. It makes sense.” Eliot handed her his plate and went to put more coffee on while she put the dishes in the sink and processed her emotions.

Hardison was back out in no time, carrying his laptop in one hand and waving at the kitchen with the other one. "Come on, dudes and babes," he said. "Come on. It's _agenda time_."

The day Eliot answered to "babe" from Hardison was the day hell froze over, so when Parker went over into the living area he took over from her at the sink. 

_"Eliot_ ," Hardison called out. 

"If I don't do this now, I ain't doing it at all," Eliot yelled over his shoulder.

"I can –" 

"And you can't put these pans in the dishwasher, man. If you wanna do the –"

"We'll get started," Hardison said. "Don't even worry about it, man. You take all the time you need. I believe in you. Smartboard or whiteboard, babe?"

"Whiteboard," said Parker.

Eliot started running water into the sink, which muffled most of Parker and Hardison's low conversation as they did whatever the hell it was they were doing. When he heard key words like "wizard" and "shapeshifting", he tuned all the way out and just fixed up the dishes. Whatever it was they were talking about, he'd see it soon enough.

Once everything was clean and rinsed and sitting in the dish rack, Eliot wiped his hands dry. When he turned to look at the living area, he saw that they'd dragged the big whiteboard out from by the wall to stand in front of the couch. There were five columns drawn on, and he could read the headings from back by the sink: Nate, Sophie, Eliot, Parker, Hardison. There was maybe a dozen entries under each name, in black and in red, and plenty of space still blank underneath. Hardison stood on one side, holding a black marker and a green one. Parker stood on the other side, balancing a red marker vertically on the tip of her pinkie finger.

"Hey," Hardison said as Eliot approached, and tossed him the green marker. "Go for it."

Eliot twirled the marker in his fingers a few times, sat himself down on the couch next to Hardison’s closed laptop and looked at the five columns. Some of the entries under Nate and Sophie had lines drawn to either entries in other columns or just to names with a question mark. Under Nate, "fits in" and "normie background" had arrows to Eliot. "Plans" went to Parker and Hardison. "Style" went to Hardison. The entries "old white couple double act" went to Eliot and Parker with six question marks. Sophie's entry of "seduction" had an arrow to a matching entry under Eliot's name. Nate's and Sophie's entries without arrows were circled: "devilry", "mind control", "shapeshifting", "on the inside”, “ass-pulls”, "old".

Parker came and sat on the arm of the couch next to him, her legs crossed and her back ramrod straight. After a second, Hardison came and sat next to Eliot on the other side, shoving his laptop into the corner and throwing an arm up along the back of the couch.

"And when we say 'food'," he said, "that's, like, work-related."

"Also not cannibalism," added Parker.

Eliot had a lot more questions about "seduction" than he had about "food", but there was a lot to take in altogether. There were the kinds of entries you'd expect to see: "retrieval", "information gathering", "stealth", "burglary", "comms". Parker had very clearly given herself "best driver" and added "advice" to everyone else's column, and Hardison had "tunes", "youth rep", "black rep" and "tech WIZARD" to his name, with three underlines. Eliot, Parker and Hardison all had "guided grift" under their names. Nate had "grift", and Sophie had "epic grift". Parker’s entry of “catburglar” had a cartoon cat’s face next to it wearing a robber’s mask.

Eliot leaned back. Puzzles like this had never been his thing, and this one he really didn't like. There was something real cold about seeing the last five years of his life broken down like this, all the most important people reduced down to scribbled items on a whiteboard, with arrows flowing from Sophie and Nate to the rest of them like they'd been decommissioned and their parts were being divvied out across a table. And Parker, by the way, was really, really _not_ the best driver.

Masterminding was so far from being Eliot's game, but simple wasn't the same as stupid. If you were good at solving puzzles, you saw the world like a puzzle. Hardison and Parker, who had that kind of brain, would stay trying to find a way to piece it all together til kingdom come. Eliot, he knew the truth when it was right in front of him. "This ain't right," he said. He felt Hardison draw in a deep breath on his left, and Parker shifted nervously by his right shoulder. 

As he walked up to the whiteboard, Eliot tugged the edge of his sleeve up into his hand. Once he was there, he rubbed off the whole Nate and Sophie columns, and every single arrow that pointed anywhere. Parker made a little dismayed sound when he started wiping, but other than that the house was still.

"This is what we got," said Eliot, turning back to them. "We ain't _missing_ a damn thing."

Parker stared at the whiteboard with extreme focus, holding herself tense, narrow-eyed and perfectly still. After a few moments, Hardison raised a hand to rest his knuckles on his mouth as his eyes scanned the board. It did nothing to hide his slow, satisfied smile that was getting wider every second. 

God, he _loved_ them. It wasn't news, not really, but sometimes it just hit real strong. A lifetime ago, he'd been young and in love. Him and Aimee had died a slow death, and he'd always assumed the chance would never come round again. How could it, after everything he'd done?

And now they were both looking at him, not the whiteboard, Parker with an intensity that burned right into him and Hardison with an easy kind of softness that broke him all the way open. Jesus. 

Hardison looked away first, because when it came to the quiet moments, the serious moments, he was insightful and gentle and always careful not to go too far. Eliot had seen it over and over in how he treated Parker, but this was the first time he'd seen it so clearly and obviously done for him. It was ... he could feel his heart beating in his chest and the marker still cool in his hand.

Parker was still staring exactly the same. She either wanted to crack him open like a safe or straight-up jump his bones. Eliot wouldn't know the difference. 

"Parker," said Hardison, leaning over to tap her on the leg. "Hey, Parker."

"Mm-hmm?" she said.

“You remember how to work with the backlog, like I showed you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wanna line up a few little jobs for Leverage International testing phase alpha? Serve up some little team-building nuggets of justice?”

Parker's eyes lit up, she put on her excited smile and she switched focus from Eliot to Hardison. “Yes,” she said, with feeling. "Yes."

Hardison reached out to her, and they did they little wavy-fingers handshake. "That's my girl," he said. "Eliot, you good?"

By now, he was again. "Always, man."

"Aight, then," Hardison said with a gleam in his eye. 

"Aight, then," Parker said, brimming with energy.

"Aight, then," Eliot said, and put the green marker down on the whiteboard's little shelf.

Parker jumped off the couch. “Let’s go steal a –” she stopped, frowned, thought. “Are we still going to do let’s go steal?”

Hardison pulled a bit of a face and shrugged. Eliot wasn’t enthusiastic about it either, but Parker really liked the whole thing and he didn’t want to take it away from her, even if it was kind of – 

"Let's go, let's go, let's go," Parker said, searching for the words.

"Let's go decide what we're gonna let's go steal," Hardison said. "We ain't even picked a job yet."

Parker gave him a disapproving glare and stood there thinking.

"Let's go find our way," Eliot said, because sometimes, yeah, the right words did come to him.

"Yes," said Parker, with a decisive nod. "Let's do that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note about possible future stuff - this is my first time writing in a TV fandom rather than from books, and I found it tricky in a few ways. I've always just written without betas or anything, one reason being because I was familiar enough with canon to either know details or be easily able to find them in the books, but if anyone has liked this and has any interest in beta reading or canon-checking or even just US-English-checking, I'd be open to talking about it!
> 
> thanks again everyone for reading, I've enjoyed writing it and hopefully will be putting more work out in the future


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